


Tummy Aches, Nightmares and All

by Calacious



Series: Comfort in November and December 2020 [16]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: AU, AU: No Capes, Bruce is a very hard sleeper, Comfortember 2020, Family Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M, clark is a rock, upset stomach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27809254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Calacious
Summary: Clark loves his family, tummy aches, nightmares and all.
Relationships: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne
Series: Comfort in November and December 2020 [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1996825
Comments: 16
Kudos: 157
Collections: Comfortember 2020





	Tummy Aches, Nightmares and All

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the comfortember prompt: Junk Food
> 
> This is not set in any canon whatsoever. It's just pure fluff and an alternative universe that keeps popping up for me with certain prompts. It's fun.

“Papa, my tummy hurts,” Timothy says, waking Clark with an insistent shake.

Clark blinks the sleep from his eyes, and lets out a startled yelp when he can finally see well enough to find Timothy’s face mere inches from his own. The little boy’s eyes are wide, and there’s a distinctly green tinge to his skin (or maybe it’s the way the light from the hallway is angled through the partially open door that makes it look like Tim’s got some alien DNA...not that aliens exist or anything).

“Your tummy hurts?” Clark asks around a yawn. He sits up in bed, and Bruce rolls over in his sleep. 

“Uh huh,” Timothy says. He rubs his belly, and grimaces. “Right here.”

“That’s your belly alright,” Clark says. He reaches down to help Timothy onto the bed, hoping that the little boy won’t puke on him.

“It feels like there’s a monster in it,” Timothy says, and in the quiet of the bedroom, broken only by Bruce’s occasional snores, Clark can hear a gurgle coming from the little boy’s stomach.

“It sounds like there’s a monster in it,” Clark says.

Timothy’s eyes grow wide, and he has a panicked look on his face. “You don’t think the monster will come out of my stomach and eat everyone, like in that movie that Jason and Dick watched, do you?”

Clark raises an eyebrow. “You know an awful lot about a movie that your brothers watched.”

Timothy ducks his head, and mumbles something that Clark can’t quite make out, but knows is a confession. Timothy, as it turns out, is a consummate stalker and spy who has taken to spying on his older brothers at all hours of the day, which up until now, has been mildly disconcerting. If he’s started watching scary movies that give him stomach aches and make him think that monsters are going to claw their way out of his stomach, then it’s gone into high concern territory. He’ll have to tell Bruce in the morning, or rather later in the morning. It’s three AM right now.

“A monster is not going to come out of your stomach,” Clark reassures the boy. “That kind of thing only happens in the movies.”

“But what if it’s an alien?” Timothy asks.

“There’s no such thing as aliens,” Clark says. 

“But what about the alien in your dreams? The one that looks like you?” Timothy asks. 

And Clark doesn’t have an answer for that. He’s told the tales of the adventures he has in his dreams, and has sold books based on the flying alien with the blue suit and the red, S, emblazoned on his chest. It’s all fantasy, something that Clark’s chalked up to a vivid imagination that his adoptive parents had fostered in him growing up.

“It’s just a dream,” Clark says. “Nothing more than that.”

“But what if it’s real?” Timothy asks. “What if all of our dreams are real, and they’re gonna come true one day?”

“That’s not going to happen,” Clark says. “The only dreams that come true are the ones that you dream with your eyes wide open. The ones that you want to come true.”

“Like Jay’s dream of becoming a writer, like you? Or Dick’s dream of becoming a pilot?” Timothy asks. He rests back against Clark, and fights off a yawn.

“And like your dream of owning your own coffee shop one day,” Clark says. 

“Or a ‘tographer,” Timothy says, eyelids drooping.

“Or a photographer,” Clark agrees. He kisses the top of Timothy’s head, and the little boy turns so that his ear is pressed against Clark’s chest, where he can hear Clark’s heartbeat. 

“How’s your tummy?” Clark asks.

“I think it’s got too much gummy bears and M&M’s, and chocolate chip cookies, and chips in it,” Timothy says, voice slurring.

“When did you eat all of that?” Clark asks.

Timothy shrugs. “Dunno.” He’s mostly asleep, and though his stomach rumbles, his skin has lost that green tinge to it, so Clark thinks they’re out of the puke zone. 

“He gonna be okay?” Bruce asks. He’s got one eye open, and his hand is resting on Clark’s knee. He’s mostly asleep as well. 

“He’ll be fine, he just had a little too much junk food tonight,” Clark says.

A light snore answers him, and Clark chuckles. Both Bruce and Timothy are out like lights,

“Typical,” Clark says, chuckling, and he lies down, rearranging Timothy so that he’s lying between both of his fathers, safe and secure in case he wakes again with more stomach trouble or a nightmare. 

He doesn’t mind being the one to get up in the early hours of the morning to deal with tummy aches and nightmares. Doesn’t mind being the one that his boys, Bruce included, rely on to chase away tummy aches and nightmares. It makes him feel a little like the dream version of himself, minus the alien DNA and the cape.

“Papa?” the word is whispered from the gap that Timothy left when he entered the room. 

When Clark opens his eyes to look, there are two dark heads, one directly above the other, poking in through the opening. He doesn’t say anything, just pulls back the comforter, and both boys come barreling into the room. 

“Let me guess,” Clark says, once the boys have settled themselves into the bed, Jason’s cold feet pressed to his calf, and Dick’s knee digging into his side. “Tummy aches and nightmares?”

“How’d you know?” Jason asks. 

“Just a hunch,” Clark says. 

“Did Timmy have a tummy ache, too?” Richard asks. 

“He did,” Clark says. 

“Told ya he was sneakin’ into our stash,” Jason says.

“I’m on it,” Bruce says, still half asleep.

“How are your tummies now?” Clark asks.

“Better,” Jason and Richard say. 

“Do we have to go to school in the morning?” Richard asks, clearly trying to wheedle his way out of it.

“Yes,” Bruce and Clark say at the same time. 

“But--”

“You wouldn’t have tummy aches or nightmares if you hadn’t eaten all of that junk food and watched a scary movie,” Clark says. 

“Timothy told you everything, didn’t he?” Jason asked, groaning, digging his cold feet deeper into Clark’s calf and making him wince.

“He thought an alien was going to burst out of his stomach and kill everyone,” Clark says. 

“That’s silly,” Jason says.

“Not to a five year old with an active imagination,” Clark says. He’d been much like Timothy in that regard. “And, given that the two of you have climbed into bed with your dad and I, I’m guessing that your sleep was not what it could have been either.”

“Sorry, Papa,” Jason says. 

“I’m sorry, too,” Richard says.

“I’m wishing we’d adopted rabbits or birds,” Bruce says, though there is no heat to his words. “Though I suppose birds would be just as noisy, and rabbits can be prone to stomach aches. Of course, I don’t know if they have nightmares or not...”

“Go to sleep,” Clark says, mildly exasperated, and very much in love with his dork of a husband, and their three little boys, tummy aches, nightmares and all.


End file.
